Berlinale: Programme

Film file

Berlinale Special

The Day After Tomorrow



The Arctic is coming – and not in the distant future, as climatologists have predicted, but sooner than we think. In the beginning, the impending change in climate is indicated by a number of unexplained signals, such as a minor earthquake in the polar cap and a sudden drop in temperature on the Scottish islands. But then, nature really begins to go haywire. Hail stones as big as your fist rain down on Tokyo and, all of a sudden, New Delhi announces “good weather for skiing and tobogganing”. And then, Los Angeles is suddenly devastated by tornados, forcing the US government to act. However, while the inhabitants of the southern parts of the country are to be evacuated, those living in the north are left to freeze to death.
In the wake of major flooding in all coastal areas, the temperature of ocean currents in the north Atlantic sinks to rock bottom. Jack Hall and his small team of climatologists are battling through the snow and towering ice. Jack is determined to get to New York to rescue his son, Sam, from the icy inferno. In the meantime, Sam, his girlfriend and a handful of others sharing their fate have sought refuge in New York’s State Library, where their incineration of rare books will only help them survive for a short while…
Roland Emmerich’s film is a graphic portrayal of what might happen if plausible weather forecasts were fast-forwarded to catastrophe; his work merges big-budget disaster movie rhetoric with an environmentalist message. Exposed to the horrors of ice and darkness until they find refuge south of the Rio Grande, the inhabitants of the industrialised north are warned: wrap up warm!

USA 2004, 124 min


Roland Emmerich


Dennis Quaid
Jake Gyllenhaal